How to Save Google Spreadsheet (In 5 Easy Steps)

Unlike Microsoft Excel, you won’t find Save or Save as option in the Google Sheets tool.

Does this mean you can’t save your Google Spreadsheet to the desktop for offline viewing?

No! Not at all…

In this tutorial, you will learn how to save Google Sheets to desktop for offline access.

Ready to dive in? Let’s get started…

Why there is no ‘Save’ option in Google Sheets?

All the tools in the Google Workspace suite including Google Sheets are cloud-based. There isn’t any save button in these tools because your documents are automatically saved to the cloud server whenever you make any change in your document.

This means that every change to the file (adding data, changing the format, modifying columns or rows, or inserting functions) is saved automatically in real-time to your Google Drive cloud account.

Google Sheets will also notify you about the last saved time and date. Clicking on this link will open the version history where you should be able to check all the past changes to your spreadsheet.

How to Save Google Spreadsheet to Desktop?

The automatic saving feature is great when you want to create and share your spreadsheet online.

But what if you want to download it for offline viewing or share it as a PDF or Excel document with your friend?

No Problem! Google Sheets has got you covered…

Here are the exact steps you need to follow in order to download and save a Google sheet to computer.

1. Open the spreadsheet you want to download.

2. Click on the File menu appearing at the top-left corner of sheet.

3. Click on Download option.

4. Choose the desired file format from the drop-down list.

Which file format you will choose depends on what you’re planning to do with the spreadsheet file.

The first two formats .xlsx and .ods are spreadsheet files native to Microsoft Excel and LibreOffice respectively. Choose one of these formats if you wish to edit your spreadsheet using either of those programs.

The next two formats .pdf and .html allow you to save your data into visual formats that any computer or browser can open. If you want to print your spreadsheet, going with Pdf format would be the appropriate option.

The last two formats .csv and .tsv are open standards files compatible with a wide range of applications. A Comma-separated values file (.csv) is a text document that uses a comma to separate values. On the other hand, a Tab-separated values file (.tsv) is a text document that uses tabs to separate values. These two file formats are often used in spreadsheet or database programs such as Microsoft Excel, Apple Number, MySQL, etc.

5. As soon as you click on one of the format, you’ll be prompted to save it in your computer. Choose desired saving location and click ok.

That’s it… Now you can find the spreadsheet file on your computer.

How to Save All the Google Sheets?

Want to save all of your Google spreadsheets at once?

Thanks to the Google Takeout service, you can download all your Google Sheets data at once.

Google Takeout is a project by Google Data Liberation Front that allows the users of Google products (such as Gmail, Docs, sheets, and YouTube) to export their data in a downloadable archive.

Here’s how it works:

1. Visit takeout.google.com and click on Deselect all. By default, Google Takeout selects all possible Google services data to be included in download archive.

2. Scroll down and select the Google Drive checkbox since all the Google Sheets document is stored in your Google Drive account.

3. Click Multiple Formats option to choose which file format you’d like your spreadsheets to downloaded as.

4. Click on the file format option near spreadsheets. You’ll get only two options to choose from — Excel or PDF.

5. Choose whichever format you prefer, then click Ok

6. Scroll to the bottom of the screen and click on the Next Step button.

7. Now you’ll be asked to select the file type, frequency, and Delivery method for your archive.

8. Finally, select Create export and then wait while Google gathers the files and archives the files to your specifications.

9. When the archive is complete, you’ll be given a Download button. Just click on download button to download the archive.

10. That’s it… Check your browser download destination folder to find the downloaded archive.

Final Thought on Saving Google Sheets

Maybe you need to import your spreadsheet data into some other software without Google Sheets integration.

Maybe you need to share your spreadsheet with someone who doesn’t use Google Sheets.

Or maybe you just want an offline copy of your Google spreadsheet for future reference.

Whatever the reason, sometimes you are going to save google Sheets to the desktop.

Thankfully, saving Google Sheets doesn’t have to be hard…

Just download the spreadsheet file in the desired format and access it anytime without any internet connection.